Authors. Feh.
Jun. 4th, 2007 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Apparently Ray Bradbury has been saying that Fahrenheit 451 is not a book about censorship, but one about television. And everyone is up in arms about it trying to prove that he once said different.
Can I just say it doesn't matter? If there was ever a clear piece of evidence that the author is not the ultimate authority on a work, it's right here. Stop paying attention to Bradbury and talk about the book. Talk about the book as an anti-censorship work. Don't rebut Bradbury in terms of his brain. It's kind of his turf, so it's not going to go well for you.
I notice that a lot of the people commenting on this are themselves authors, so maybe they have trouble letting go of their own, um, authority. If you're an author, learn to be one of many readers of the book you've written. Find and read Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill's "Pharaoh's Daughter" because she's an author who gets it.
Can I just say it doesn't matter? If there was ever a clear piece of evidence that the author is not the ultimate authority on a work, it's right here. Stop paying attention to Bradbury and talk about the book. Talk about the book as an anti-censorship work. Don't rebut Bradbury in terms of his brain. It's kind of his turf, so it's not going to go well for you.
I notice that a lot of the people commenting on this are themselves authors, so maybe they have trouble letting go of their own, um, authority. If you're an author, learn to be one of many readers of the book you've written. Find and read Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill's "Pharaoh's Daughter" because she's an author who gets it.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 12:59 am (UTC)Bradbury is no longer the man who wrote Fahrenheit 451 or Dandelion Wine or the Martian Chronicles, a fact made clear by his really terrible reworking of his Family stories into a book length travesty a few years ago. That person is gone. It's too bad he doesn't know it.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 04:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 04:20 am (UTC)Then I saw his appearance on "Politically Incorrect" in which he shrugged off Bob Packwood having sexually assaulted his secretary with a kind of "well that's the way guys treat girls, so what?", and even Bill Maher was like, um, you don't mean that, do you? There's been no doubt in my mind for years now that reconciling Bradbury the author and Bradbury the man (possibly just Bradbury the elderly man) is like trying to reconcile Jane Fonda the political activist and Barbarella.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 01:34 am (UTC)sometimes there is TEXT intent -- a book can set out an intent (and then accomplish it or not). but that's different.
Doing my part
Date: 2007-06-05 02:40 am (UTC)And it was y'all who taught me the difference in the LJ-ified annals, I'm pretty sure. :)
Re: Doing my part
Date: 2007-06-05 03:14 am (UTC)Re: Doing my part
Date: 2007-06-05 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 03:08 am (UTC)When people talk about ignoring authorial intent, it makes me think of Reagan using "Born in the USA" as a campaign song. What is the difference? Is it just that Springsteen's interpretation of his song is shared by most of his fans, while Bradbury's is probably not? (This isn't a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely confused.)
no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 03:27 am (UTC)In terms of your question, the difference is that Reagan's interpretation of the song is only supported at all by the chorus, so the text itself can be shown to fit Springsteen's stated interpretation better than Reagan's. (or Atwater's, or whoever.) Bradbury's interpretation of the book as an anti-television work is, in my opinion, not as well supported as an interpretation as an anti-censorship book.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 03:29 am (UTC)The problem with authorial intent is that you have:
1. What the author intended when he or she wrote the book
2. What the author remembers as having intended
3. What the author decides to tell people he or she intended
4. The book as it exists, regardless of (1)
Since I don't care about (1), and (2) and (3) make intent completely unknowable with any accuracy, we might as well focus on (4). (4) doesn't exist in a vacuum (there's the cultural and historical context in which the reader lives and reads, and which the reader believes the book was written and published in, and all other kinds of sociocultural and material contexts), but it's *knowable* in a way intent just *isn't*.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 04:16 am (UTC)lots of unchecked uncheckable factors go into a thing. the author is the last person i would listen to.
*understood there are exceptions. i can pinpoint where Harry Potter looses any sort of additional input, somewheres in book 4. my theory is that once they realized they would make money with no additional effort, they stopped additionally efforting. the results are disaster.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 04:26 am (UTC)Sorry, that anecdote had no point. I just felt like telling it.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 05:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 05:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 11:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-06 07:32 am (UTC)But the key is still the text. If George Lucas comes forth and says, "In fact, Star Wars isn't a Campbellian/Jungian journey, it's a metaphor for the gold standard," believe me, I'll quite happily ignore him.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-06 11:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 09:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-06 12:58 pm (UTC)I just got back from vacation, so I ahve no idea what "everyone" is saying. But it sounds to me like Bradbury is talking abot the germ of the book and the backstory of the book's present. It's easy to find parallels between Fahrenheit and 1984, but Bradbury seems to suggest that the situation in Fahrenheit is more a result of the citizens than of the state. The end result, the censorship state is the same, but the causes are very different. And it's easy to argue that the erosion of the quest for wisdom is more of a threat in modern America than the pointed establishment of a totalitarian state.